Marketing in the Digital Age
From sunrise to sunset, a constant stream of messages fills our senses.
What is all the noise about?
Why is everyone trying to communicate with us?
The answer is marketing.
Marketing is a business field where businesses or organizations attempt to identify, satisfy, and retain customers by creating and delivering products or services that consumers find valuable.
Billboards, social media postings, product samples at markets, and even catchy lyrics in songs are all forms of marketing.
These activities are utilized to increase sales, but they may also be used for other specific objectives, such as boosting brand awareness, building customer loyalty, or increasing market share.
While marketing in the modern world is complex, it was much simpler in the past.
Your grandparents have probably told you how lucky you are to have so many modern conveniences like washing machines, televisions, and rice cookers.
Marketing was relatively simple in the past because every household needed to clean their clothes, watch the news, and cook food, and few companies could make and sell products that could perform those tasks.
Print advertisements, broadcasting, door-to-door sales, and other offline methods were cost-effective ways to market products that people found useful.
However, marketing has dramatically changed in present times as businesses utilize new technology, analyze consumer behavior, and shift business strategies.
Traditional marketing was mostly offline but expanded online when the Internet and technology became more available.
Businesses discovered that these new tools could find out who their customers were, provide them with what they needed, and develop loyalty to their brand.
Big brands realized that they could spend marketing dollars on their websites to provide relevant, informative content about their products.
Social media created “influencers” who could use their platforms to engage with potential customers and communities.
Even streaming services could use product placement to connect with a more specific audience than broadcast television ever could.
Furthermore, the online connection also had a secondary benefit: data.
By analyzing the data of consumers’ online behavior, businesses could now better understand consumer preferences and optimize their marketing efforts.
For example, if John keeps reading online reviews of winter jackets, a clothing company can send him a coupon for one of their jackets, creating a new customer.
Nowadays, products and services are no longer “one-size-fits-all.”
Major brands create variations of their products to satisfy the needs of different consumers.
However, many consumers may ask themselves whether or not they should trust a certain company, so a personalized experience helps to build a bridge of trust between them.
For example, meme marketing reaches out to a very specific group of people.
A meme is usually humorous, relatable, and easily shareable, so creating a meme for a product requires the marketer to be both informed of the meme and sensitive to the timing of it.
If a consumer understands the message, they know they are part of the group and some trust can be implied.
Social media influencers can also help businesses by promoting products that they use as consumers themselves.
This type of marketing provides businesses with feedback about what consumers want.
If consumers have everything they need, how can a business grow?
Businesses can use marketing to create “wants.”
For many consumers, using a particular brand is a status symbol.
To illustrate, some celebrities become “brand ambassadors” by using a particular product.
Their fans can associate themselves with popular celebrities by using products that they use.
In addition, promoting values is also an important strategy to create demand.
Environmental concerns, political alignment, and lifestyle types can influence consumer behavior, too.
When faced with a choice between brands, many consumers will choose a brand that is aligned with their values.
For example, companies that support an environmental cause may be more appealing for consumers who value the same cause.
When consumers do not know what their values are, psychological strategies like “hunger marketing” can be used, which sparks demand by using psychology.
When people hear that consumers are standing in line or paying a premium, the desire for a product may grow.
When Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans was first exhibited in 1962, it was an immediate sensation.
Although the Campbell’s Soup company was initially opposed to it, they soon realized that it was good publicity for their brand.
The company even commissioned Warhol to create other works of art for them and later used Warhol’s paintings in advertising campaigns.
Warhol’s painting is an excellent example of how celebrity exposure can be used in marketing.
These days, businesses have many more tools available to them to find out about customers and create demand for products and services.
These examples are just some of the strategies that businesses use, and they often use more than one.
Some results of these strategies are the video content, influencer messages, billboards, and celebrity product recommendations that are shown to us every day.
All of this noise is businesses trying to communicate with consumers, but in the end, it’s up to the consumer to decide what to believe.